NASA satellite records northern lights’dazzlig image

Ottawa: A NASA satellite has captured a dazzling infrared image of northern lights that appeared as swirls of glowing clouds over northern Canada on the night of December 22.

In a statement, NASA’s Earth Observatory said that the night after the winter solstice, NASA’s Suomi NPP spacecraft recorded the northern lights, or aurora borealis, across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut and northwest territories in Canada.

“The collision of solar particles and pressure on our planet’s magnetosphere accelerates particles trapped in the space around Earth. Those particles are sent crashing down into Earth’s upper atmosphere — at altitudes of 100 to 400 km — where they excite oxygen and nitrogen molecules and release photons of light. The results are rays, sheets and curtains of dancing light in the sky,” NASA said in a statement explaining the northern lights.